Predictions Charles Tilly
Joseph L. Buttenwieser Professor of Social Science, Columbia
Date: Sat, 15 Sep 2001
Let me take advantage of this bullhorn to broadcast some predictions concerning
what we will eventually learn about and from the suicide crashes a little less
than four days ago.
Students of human affairs can hope to make two different kinds of predictions:
unconditional predictions based on statistical regularities, and if-then
predictions based on causal regularities. In the first category, demographers
compare favorably to weather forecasters when it comes to anticipating,
over large populations, how many children will be born tomorrow, how
many people will be injured in automobile accidents, and so on -- just
so long as they remember which day of the week and year tomorrow is,
making appropriate adjustments for weekly and seasonal cycles.
The second category brings us instantly onto controversial territory;
at issue is not just the validity of any particular causal connection
but a set of assumptions concerning the nature of social processes, causality, and
knowledge of both social processes and causality.
I write out predictions in the two categories not because I know the answers
better than anyone else, but for precisely the opposite reason. Most
of learn more from discovering that we were wrong, then inquiring into
how and why we went wrong, than from being right. I am hoping a) to encourage
amsoc colleagues to lay out their own contrary predictions, b) to identify
errors in my own knowledge and reasoning, c) thereby to identify errors
in the public discussion of what to do about terrorists and d) perhaps
to stimulate more creative and constructive thinking about alternatives
to dividing up the world into Us and Them as a preliminary to dropping
bombs on Them.
It will turn out that:
1. More than four suicide crews set off to seize airliners on Tuesday, but
only four succeeded in taking over their targets.
2. Participants in the effort were never, ever in their lives all in
the same place in the same time.
3. All were connected indirectly by networks of personal acquaintance, but
not all had ever met each other, or knowingly joined a single conspiracy.
4. Because of network logic, all were therefore connected to Osama bin Laden
and a number of other organizers or sponsors of attacks on western targets.
5. But no single organization or single leader coordinated Tuesday's action.
6. Some participants in seizure of aircraft only learned what they were supposed
to do shortly before action began, and had little or no information about
other planned seizures of aircraft.
7. Instead of emerging from a single well coordinated plot, these actions
result in part from competition among clusters of committed activists
to prove their greater devotion and efficacy to the (vaguely defined)
cause of bringing down the enemy (likewise vaguely defined).
8. Bombing the presumed headquarters of terrorist leaders will a) shift the
balance of power within networks of activists and b) increase incentives
of unbombed activists to prove their mettle.
9. If the US, NATO, or the great powers insist that all countries choose sides
(thus reconstituting a new sort of Cold War), backing that insistence
with military and financial threats will increase incentives of excluded
powers to align themselves with dissidents inside countries that have
joined the US side, and of dissidents to accept aid from the excluded.
10. Most such alliances will form further alliances with merchants handling
illegally traded drugs, arms, diamonds, lumber, oil, sexual services,
11. In Russia, Uzbekistan, Lebanon, the Caucasus, Turkey, Sudan, Nigeria,
Serbia, Algeria, and a number of other religiously divided countries,
outside support for dissident Muslim forces will increase, with increasing
connection among Islamic oppositions across countries.
12. Bombing the presumed originator(s) of Tuesday's attacks and forcing other
countries to choose sides will therefore aggravate the very conditions
American leaders will declare they are preventing.
13. If so, democracy (defined as relatively broad and equal citizenship, binding
consultation of citizens, and protection from arbitrary actions by governmental
agents) will decline across the world.
Am I sure these dire predictions are correct? Of course not. I write them out both to place myself on record and to encourage counter-predicitons from better informed colleagues.